TREN EVENT: How to succeed in a startup despite 7 lawyers on your board and a crummy economy

The Three River's Entrepreneur Network presents its December seminar: How to succeed in a startup despite 7 lawyers on your board and a crummy economy. The speaker will be Skip Walter, an entrepreneur and independent consultant. During the last economic downturn in the aftermath of the dot com meltdown, Skip Walter founded Attenex with funding from Preston Gates (now K&L Gates); the company discovered how to dramatically reduce the cost of electronic discovery in litigation through the use of visual analytics. Through prototypes generated in collaboration with PNNL, the company could improve productivity for lawyers by at least 300%. After forming Attenex, the first product, Attenex Patterns, achieved greater than 1000% productivity improvement over alternative methods. While the innovation at the product level (> 12 issued patents) proceeded as planned, the business model and capital formation went through many twists and turns.

What You'll Learn

How to innovate from idea to product to commercialization

How to attract capital at the right time, from the right funding source, depending on economic conditions

How to find and develop the talent needed to grow a successful startup from idea to operations

How to find a growth partner to acquire the company at the right time

Who Should Attend

start-ups and early stage companies

new product line developers and managers

entrepreneurs

angel and seed round investors

Registration

There is no charge to attend. You must pre-register by Friday, December 12, to attend. Space is limited, so register early. A continental breakfast will be provided.

To register, please e-mail: edo@pnl.gov or call Alice Ettesvold at (509) 375-2068 with the following information for each attendee: name, company/organization affiliation, phone number, and e-mail.

Note: Room capacity is limited. Preference is given to technology-based businesses and economic development professionals.

Skip was the founding CEO for Attenex, which was sold to FTI Consulting in 2008 for $89 million. Skip has raised more than $25 million in new venture funding for four software companies in the office automation, health care, and legal industries. He has over 40 years of experience in executive management, software engineering, product development, high technology mergers and acquisitions, organization development, joint venture development, designing, architecting, producing, and delivering software solutions for the legal industry, publishing industry, health care industry, Global 1000 companies, and small high technology startups. He was the Vice President of Engineering for Aldus (now Adobe) Corporation known for PageMaker page layout software. In addition, Skip was the father of ALL-IN-1, Digital Equipment Corporation's $1 billion per year integrated enterprise office automation system. The products that he designed, created, and developed are now used by more than five million customers. Skip is a sought after speaker and panelist in the legal technology industry. Skip was selected for the Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Informatics at Indiana University. For ten years, he taught strategic design and product design planning at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Skip currently works with early stage startups such as Future Point Systems and Conenza. In addition, he's starting his next company, Third Channel, to provide a third route to consumers for wineries using Web 2.0/3.0 and visual analytics technologies.